Odhrán (Oran) Roche

Education

Odhrán graduated with a BSc. Computer Science from University College Dublin (UCD) in 2013. His degree broadly focused on data structures and algorithms, mathematical logic, object oriented programming, and artificial intelligence.

During university, Odhrán taught Java programming in one on one lessons to computer science undergraduates and conversion course masters students. This tutoring would later influence his decision to move into the field of technical training. He also worked as tutoring assistant for an undergraduate database design course.

For his final thesis, Odhrán created a self-learning artificial intelligence that could develop its own strategy to play the board game Agon. The system was written in the scripting language Lua and used genetic programming techniques to develop game strategies. The project was well received and was awarded a final grade of A-.

Odhrán volunteered on a student committee for supporting UCDs LGBTQ+ community. He worked as communications officer, running the group website and sending group notifications.

Odhrán's final thesis paper on AI for the game Agon.

Professional education

Odhrán has completed a long list of professional courses in project management, Agile, leadership, technical writing, and instructional design. He is ITIL 4 Foundation certified.

Experience

Application support

From 2014 to 2016 Odhrán worked on a team of global application engineers at Mastercard. This role was aimed at timely resolution of system issues for two major software products. When he started on the team, system issues were identified reactively. Issues were only noticed when customers contacted customer support. Odhrán developed scripts in Perl and Bash to monitor application health and provide proactive alerting. These scripts were later replaced by Splunk.

The applications that Odhrán supported were Java applications running on Red Hat Linux servers with multiple, distributed instances. Investigating issues involved reviewing log files and updating databases using SQL.

Odhrán supported Mastercard software applications for several years.

Odhrán was project manager for failover and disaster recovery procedures for the Mastercard product InControl©. This experience led to him becoming a system expert for InControl. He led training sessions that introduced new team members to the product.

After his first year in this role Odhrán was promoted, a step that acknowledged a significant contribution to the company in a short amount of time. His experience with application support would be critical in his future role as a technical trainer, which focused on skills development for application support engineers.

Software engineering

From 2017 to 2018 Odhrán was a software engineer at Paysafe. He worked on an online payments API using Java. His team used Scrum to plan and manage their workflow, which started his interest in Agile, productivity, and project management.

Odhrán was dissatisfied with the limited scope of his role. After 1.5 years he decided to leave software engineering and remains unavailable for full time programming roles.

Odhrán built an online payments API using Java during his time at Paysafe.

Technical training

In 2018 Odhrán was offered the opportunity to lead the development of a technical training program for Tungsten Network (now part of a larger company called Tungsten Automation). In this role, Odhrán used his experience from application support to plan, build, and execute onboarding and upskilling trainings.

Odhrán worked with stakeholders to plan onboarding training for application support teams and other IT staff. A 2-3 week training agenda was planned, and Odhrán developed each topic as an independent training module. He used LearnUpon (a learning management system) to create self-study content with text, diagrams, videos, and quizzes. He also created instructor led workshops for each topic. Workshops were adapted to be run virtually at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Odhrán developed upskilling technical training for topics like SQL, PL/SQL, Splunk, and change management. He developed and ran trainings simultaneously. He planned and tracked projects with Trello. Odhrán managed skill assessments and feedback for all students who participated in training.

Odhrán led the technical training program at Tungsten Network.

Technical content development and editing

In 2021 Odhrán joined IBM to help develop the internal IBM technical education portfolio. He developed self-study content for hardware service engineers who install and maintain IBM systems globally. He specialized in enterprise storage systems, like the IBM FlashSystem family.

Odhrán used various tools for content development. He created and edited training content using:

• Adobe FrameMaker (documents)

• Storyline (interactive modules)

• Adobe Captivate (interactive modules/simulations)

• Camtasia (video content)

• Moodle Books (LMS content)

Odhrán is an expert in the IBM writing style (a style based on the Chicago Manual of Style), and was the assistant editor for the global content development team. He trained new hires to apply IBM style conventions.

Odhrán was the project manager for content developer onboarding. He created and led a learning plan for new hires to learn about team tools, processes, and quality standards. He trained team members on content development tools, and provided ad hoc mentoring. Odhrán managed projects with Trello and Monday.

At IBM, Odhrán creates technical education content for hardware systems.

Volunteering

Animal rescue

Odhrán has worked with several animal rescue organizations that take animals from the street and find new homes.

From 2021 to 2023 Odhrán coordinated information for the registered charity Slatina Puppy Gang. He built a database of dogs for adoption to help track dog status and information. He also created a website to advertise the dogs that are for adoption. Odhrán produced a monthly report that highlighted group activity like adopted dogs, dogs available, donations received and expenses.

Odhrán has worked with Slatina Puppy Gang, Sharo Foundation, and Bunny Rescue Bulgaria as a foster home. From 2020 to the present day he has fostered dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs. A full list of fostered animal is available on his website. He has written a number of blog posts about fostering and animal rescue.

Diversity and inclusion

Odhrán started working with diversity and inclusion groups in university. At UCD he was communications officer for the UCD LGBTQ+ student society. He advertised group activities, ran the group website, and assisted with event coordination.

In 2018 Odhrán was interviewed by Bulgarian LGBTQ+ youth organization Single Step about his experience growing up gay in Ireland.

Starting in 2022 Odhrán volunteered as communications coordinator for IBM's global LGBTQ+ business resource group. As part of a media team he coordinated and produced monthly newsletters about group news and relevant IBM updates. The newsletter was received by more than one thousand group members.

Odhrán was assistant website editor for an Irish LGBTQ+ mental health service called RainbowMinds in 2024.

Education

Odhrán has volunteered with several organizations that help children learn computer programming. He has participated as volunteer and tutor for CoderDojo and Hour of Code.